Page 80 of Beautiful Rush
So Ivan Petrov wasn’t my real father. He was the sperm donor who felt like he’d done ‘the right thing’ by giving Natalya money for an abortion. I had dealt with all those emotions quickly and efficiently and, for the most part, I had moved on. I knew who I was, and I knew the kind of man I wanted to be. Ivan Petrov had no bearing on that whatsoever.
I had made my peace with pulling the trigger and putting two bullets in Anthony Brennan. It had been self-defense and if there had been another way out, I would have taken it. Killing a man is not something I’m proud of. I don’t take it lightly. But I can live with it. I can look at myself in the mirror without flinching. I did what I had to do.
I had found a way to put the shooting incident and the Ivan Petrov revelation behind me, but Keira had not.
While I’d been recuperating, Keira had been living with me. Playing nurse. Fussing over me. Worrying about me. Her brow perpetually furrowed. She was scared, and if there was anything I hated more than seeing Keira sad or unhappy, it was seeing her scared. She had let her fears take over and they were starting to consume her.
There had been countless nights when I’d woken up to find her staring at me in the darkness, her hand on my heart to ensure it was still beating. She was scared to lose me. Scared of the day when I would go back to work. Last week, in the middle of the night, I had felt her watching me.
“Are you going to stare at me all night?” I asked, my eyes still closed.
“Maybe.” She placed her palm on my heart. Over the scar on my chest. I opened my eyes and turned my head to look at her. She was on her side, her head propped up on her hand.
“Why the Gang Squad? Tell them to assign you to traffic duty or something.”
“Do you want me to die of boredom?”
“That’s not funny,” she said darkly.
“It’s my job, baby. What happened that night was not the norm.” I reeled off statistics of the likelihood of getting shot on the job. It was unlikely. “It’s more dangerous to be a logger than a cop.”
But she wasn’t buying it and nothing I could say put her mind at ease.
“Every time you walk out the door, I’m going to worry that you won’t come home.”
I wanted to tell her that I would always come home to her, that nothing was going to happen to me. But I couldn’t make that kind of guarantee. Nobody could. You never knew when your time was up. “You can’t live in fear. That’s no way to live.”
“You almost died, Deacon.”
“But I didn’t. I’m still here, right next to you. Propped up on three of your downy pillows.” It was overkill. The air was thinner up here.
“I’m trying to take care of you.”
“And I appreciate that. But if you want to take care of me, move your hand lower.” I guided her hand to where I wanted it. “Forget the hand. I want to be inside you.”
“I’m being serious.”
“So am I. Ineedto be inside you.”
“Remember how you felt when Eddie put that rock in my air valve? Multiply that by a thousand and you won’t even come close to feeling how I do. And remember how angry you were with me?”
I remembered. I also remembered that my anger was mainly directed at myself for not putting a stop to those races. And that what had really made me angry was that she had lied to me. “That was different.”
“You know what it is? A double standard. It’s okay for you to worry about me, but it’s not okay for me to worry about you.”
“It’s not okay when it’s keeping you up nights. Or when it’s making you scared to live, Keira.”
I gave it some thought over the next few days. God knows I had plenty of time to sit around and think about shit. If it had been up to my mother and Keira, my ass would be planted on the sofa all day long, remote in hand until Keira returned home from work each evening. But I came up with a solution to the problem.
My solution was unorthodox and a little bit crazy. To most people, it wouldn’t make sense, which made it perfect for us. “Do you miss street racing?” I asked her a few nights later over dinner—chili and cornbread that my mom had coached her through while she’d been cooking it. Unfortunately, Keira had gone off-piste and added chilies that were undoubtedly the hottest chilies on the planet. So I couldn’t tell you if the chili was any good or not. After the first bite, my taste buds were destroyed for two days. It was so spicy that my eyes teared up, my nose ran, and my lips blistered.
“Is that a trick question? More Chili Diablo?” she asked, a wicked grin on her face.
“It’s a yes or no answer. No to the chili. And I feel no compulsion to finish yours either.”
“So it was a success,” she said with a smug smile. “And yes. But I promised not to do it anymore.”
“What if there’s a way you can do it legally?”
